Read Part I of Algernon
Blackwood’s “The Willows” Story is
also in blog: vamc18.blogspot.com
Answer the Following questions:
1.
Describe the setting of Algernon Blackwood’s “The
Willows.” Where and when does the story take place?
2.
After reading section “I” of “The Willows” what
would you say the mood of the story is? What words, or textual evidence support
your claim for this?
3.
Describe the relationship between mood and setting
in the story. How does one contribute to the other?
4.
In a literary piece, a motif is a recurrent
image, idea, or symbol that develops or explains a theme, while a theme is a
central idea or message. Pertaining to this short story, specifically in the
manner in which nature is portrayed, repeatedly, in part “I” of “The Willows,”
what would you say is the reoccurring motif we see being developed in the story.
Hint, it has to do with how nature is repeatedly portrayed.
I.E. The following passage is an example
where we see can see an instance of motif regarding nature in the story:
“We had made many similar journeys
together, but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from
the very beginning with its aliveness.
From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of
Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of
losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had
seemed to us like following the grown of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent
desires as it became conscious of its
deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries
we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing
roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length
we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great
Personage.
5.
There are many examples of foreshadowing in the
story, even in Part “I”. Write two examples of foreshadowing in Part “I” of “The
Willows.”
6.
Read the following passage from part “I” of “The
Willows.” Just by reading these two paragraphs, themselves, what would you say
is the theme of the story?
“Great
revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another,
and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans
terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its
own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with
human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming,
emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.
With
this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt.
Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe
awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried
ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving
furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome
suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a
world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to
remain -- where we ran grave risks perhaps!”
7.
How does the writer build tension in the story?
Think about the things the two travelers need to worry about that make their
river trek dangerous and mysterious.
8. How effective does the
setting contribute to mood? What else creates mood in a story?
“The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million
willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched
us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath
he moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an
alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we,
in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more
than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire,
and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get
firewood.”
